1. Field of the Invention
The disclosures herein generally relates to large-capacity ink cartridge containers used in inkjet printer systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recording apparatuses used in inkjet printer systems, in general, form images by discharging a required amount of ink droplets from multiple ink discharging nozzles on a printing head according to image processing results to be recorded onto required areas of recording media selectively.
Basic operations of the recording apparatuses used in inkjet printer systems are as follows. At first, a host such as a PC sends print commands and preprocessed image data to a printer via an interface. Then, based on the commands, a controller conveys recording media, drives mechanical sections, and executes other controlling operations such as supplying ink or maintaining heads.
Recording methods of the recording apparatuses used in inkjet printer systems are divided broadly into two categories. One is a serial printing method with which a printing head makes a reciprocal motion in a direction perpendicular to a conveyance direction of recording media. The other is a line printing method in which a printing head is fixed while printing.
The serial printing method can print on a large-surface media by lengthening a scanning distance of a carriage, without making a printing head larger. On the other hand, the line printing method is suitable for high-speed printing because a printing head does not need to make a scanning movement, although the printing head needs to have a length covering the width of the recording media.
The line printing method for high-speed printing requires a very large amount of ink at a unit time because a printing head has a length covering the width of the recording media as mentioned above. Therefore, it is common to use large-capacity ink cartridges for supplying ink to printing heads in order to minimize exchange operations and costs.
Also, it is common to use large-capacity ink cartridges with an ink outlet attached on an upper side of a container with respect to the center of the container, because if the ink outlet is attached to a lower side of the container with respect to the center, it may happen that all ink flows out from the container for some reason. In addition, it is desirable that a container is kept tightly closed except for the outlet, to avoid evaporation of liquid.
However, conventional large-capacity ink cartridge containers mentioned above used in the line printing method have problems that exist while ink is being consumed, whereas the shape of the container deforms irregularly, which forms multiple ink-remaining pools in the ink cartridge container. The ink remaining in the pools is difficult to reuse, resulting in waste ink.
To solve the problems, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 59-006234 discloses a flexible recording liquid container with a tightly closed structure, and a delivery tube with multiple holes on its surface, which is attached to the recording liquid container for delivering recording liquid out of the container.
Also, Japanese Patent No. 3342372 discloses an ink cartridge container having a flexible ink bag to store ink and an ink delivery tube in the bag to deliver the ink outside. The thickness of the bag around the neighborhood of the suctioning end of the S ink delivery tube is made thicker than other surface areas of the bag so that the flexible bag starts deforming from thin-surface areas, which may be away from the ink delivery tube.
However, when applying the configuration of the recording liquid container disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 59-006234, as it is, to a large-capacity ink cartridge container with an upper-sided ink outlet, a total length of the ink delivery tube becomes too long, which makes it difficult to bend and to position the ink delivery tube to cover all the interior of the recording liquid container. Therefore, the ink may still remain.
Also, the large-capacity ink cartridge container disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3342372 has problems. Although the flexible ink bag has a thicker surface around the ink delivery tube than the other surface areas so that the flexible bag starts deforming with thin-surface areas away from the ink delivery tube, it is difficult to deform areas uniformly around ridgelines in the ink bag due to their complicated shapes. Therefore, the ink may still form multiple remaining ink pools.